[shane235]

^ When I went in June, GateKeeper was a walk-on. The only long lines were for TTD and Maverick.

[Chris]

How many of the million riders were rerides? Easy to reride over and over again when nobody is in the park. In comparison, Millienium Force always has a 30 to 60 minute wait a Cedar Point during this same time of year, and Diamondback you will usually wait 30 minutes. Same capacity coasters...

Having spent an entire summer working at Cedar Point I can tell you that it definitely does not always have a 30 to 60 minute wait.

Also, you have to remember that Cedar Point and Kings Island have around 3.2 million visitors a year. Last I heard Carowinds had a bit over 2 million. That is a HUGE difference. Just because they built Fury doesn't mean they are going to suddenly have a 50% increase in attendance. My guess is the park breaks its all-time attendance record this season and just keeps on going up gradually from there.

Maybe I'm off, but I think people don't realize how much Cedar Point basically having an hour long commercial on The Travel Channel every few hours during the entire late 90s, early 2000s had an impact on the continue success of the park. If Carowinds had that same kind of treatment year after year, with every single new addition, then I can easily see Carowinds inching closer to CP in attendance numbers.

[gabed]

Well, Travel Channel is making a special for Fury sometime soon. Does anyone know if it's aired yet?

[saxrokinhomo]

Already this season th park has had two record breaking holiday weekends with Memorial Day weekend and the weekend of the Fourth of July. Just because the park isn't your idea of busy, or the lines aren't as long as crap for a certain ride on a particular WEEKDAY ( which are always slower than a weekend) doesn't mean it was a bad investment. CF is more than well aware of what they are doing with their investments into carowinds and the Charlotte market.

[Carowinds2005]

Food for thought. Keep in mind that Carowinds has a longer operating schedule than KI and CP which gives guest more options to visit within the calendar year.

[arby]

You took the words right out of my mouth. Carowinds has at least a 6 week longer season than CP. So up to this point, CP has had about 1.2 mil more people with a shorter season. This isn't Orlando so improvements with Carowinds have to be taken in smaller steps.

[MarkD]

Remember, Rome was not built in a day!

[Jetp]

Well, Travel Channel is making a special for Fury sometime soon. Does anyone know if it's aired yet?

I saw on Carowinds Facebook page that it will air in August.

[chargercrazy]

Wait times for coasters also depend on operations (how quickly trains dispatch, how many trains are running, etc.).

[Atombomb]

[Atombomb]

How many of the million riders were rerides? Easy to reride over and over again when nobody is in the park. In comparison, Millienium Force always has a 30 to 60 minute wait a Cedar Point during this same time of year, and Diamondback you will usually wait 30 minutes. Same capacity coasters...

Having spent an entire summer working at Cedar Point I can tell you that it definitely does not always have a 30 to 60 minute wait.

Also, you have to remember that Cedar Point and Kings Island have around 3.2 million visitors a year. Last I heard Carowinds had a bit over 2 million. That is a HUGE difference. Just because they built Fury doesn't mean they are going to suddenly have a 50% increase in attendance. My guess is the park breaks its all-time attendance record this season and just keeps on going up gradually from there.

Maybe I'm off, but I think people don't realize how much Cedar Point basically having an hour long commercial on The Travel Channel every few hours during the entire late 90s, early 2000s had an impact on the continue success of the park. If Carowinds had that same kind of treatment year after year, with every single new addition, then I can easily see Carowinds inching closer to CP in attendance numbers.

Cedar Point's attendance was high way before all those tv shows. They reached 1 million guests for the first time in 1906 and 2 million guests for the first time in 1965!

[Capler]

An amusement is like a hotel. You get your numbers during special events and during the days you are supposed to be near 100%. Don't judge Carowinds from what you see Mon-Thursday. Start getting worried if it's dead on a Saturday. It's up to the park to host more special events such as Taste of Carolinas, concerts, high school days, band competition, in order to get the attendance up. Some folk keep forgetting the impact of the water park. If the water park is filled and the park is empty on a hot summer day, then things are working as they should. Basically the water park is there to maintain numbers during the hottest part of the summer. Then there is the Scarowinds factor. Like the State Fair, the park get big numbers during a short period of time. I would guess Scarowinds is much more profitable than the Mon-Thurs operations.